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Page 68
But the memory of that plucky little smile stayed right with Billy.
The girl liked him, she liked him in spite of his unknown
antecedents, his preposterous picture, his conspicuous companion.
She had a mind of her own, that tall English girl with the lovely
eyes and the proud mouth. In a warm surge of friendliness his
thoughts went out to her, and he wished vaguely that he could let
her know how fine he thought she was.
Within an hour that vague wish came true. He had packed Fritzi off,
with a newly acquired maid, for a drive up and down the safe public
streets and he had re-interviewed the one-eyed man and the native
chauffeur that the one-eyed man introduced for the evening's work,
and he was at one of the public desks in the writing room, inditing
a letter to his aunt, which, he whimsically appreciated, might be
his last mortal composition, and reflecting thankfully that it was
highly unnecessary to make a will, when Lady Claire strolled into
the room and over to a desk.
She tried a pen frowningly, and Billy jumped to offer another. "Oh,
thank you," she said. She seemed not to have seen him before.
"That was rather nice of you, you know," he said gravely.
She looked up at him.
"I'm not really a wolf," he continued, the gravity surrendering to
his likable, warm smile, "and I'm glad you recognized it."
Her reply took him unawares. "I think you're _splendid_," said Lady
Claire. "I thought so in the bazaars when you came to my help and
stood up to that _beastly_ German."
"Oh, he wasn't such a beastly German, after all," Billy deprecated.
"And here I've had a message to you from him and never remembered to
give it. The fellow called on me the next morning in gala attire and
offered every apology and satisfaction in his power--even the
satisfaction of the duel, if I desired it. I didn't. But I promised
to express his deep apologies to you. He was horribly shocked at
himself. He'd been drinking, he said, to forget a 'sadness' which
possessed him. His lady love had failed to keep her tryst and life
was very dark."
"I don't wonder at her," said Lady Claire unforgivingly. "I'm sure
he must have been horrid to her!"
"I rather think she was horrid to him," Billy reflected, "although
she was a very sprightly looking lady love. He showed me her picture
in the back of his watch.... By _George_!" he uttered violently.
"What is it?"
"Oh--an idea, that's all. Something I must really attend to before
I--this afternoon, I mean. But there's no hurry about it," he added
cheerily.
Oh, Billy, Billy! Not even with his blood hot with thoughts of the
evening's work, not even with his memory ridden with Arlee's gay
witchery, could he keep his restless young eyes from laughing down
at her. But there wasn't a notion in the back of his honest head as
to the picture he was making in Lady Claire's eyes as he leaned,
long-limbed, broad-shouldered, lazily at ease against the desk, his
gray eyes very bright between their dark lashes, his dark hair
sweeping back from his wide forehead.
"Are you sure?" she asked of him, with the smile that he drew from
her. "Is it the inspiration for another picture?"
"No, no--that was my first and my last. That was the one purple
bloom of my art. I have laid my brushes by.... But I'm keeping you
from that letter you were going to write."
"It's just a few lines for Miss Falconer," Lady Claire unnecessarily
explained. "We are going to drive out to the Gezireh Palace Hotel
for tea, and she thought her brother might like to go out with us if
he came in in time."
She did not add why Miss Falconer was unable to write her own notes,
but slanted her blue-hatted head over the desk and then hastily
blotted her brief lines and tucked the sheet into an envelope.
Hesitantly she looked up at Billy.
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